"The Soviet navy was not in great shape at the onset of the German invasion on June 22, 1941. Stalin had decimated the ranks of the naval officer corps, which greatly complicated planning, and the invasion forced many warship projects to a halt.

The Soviets envisioned one of these projects, the Kronshtadt-class battlecruiser, to be faster than Germany's Bismarck-class battleship and more powerful than the Scharnhorst.

Alas, the demands of the war saw that the Kronshtadt was never built. But in 1944, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin rebooted the concept for a namesake ship, the Stalingrad-class battlecruise…"